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<p>Provides the interfaces and classes necessary to create custom
user account data providers for Openfire.</p>
<p>User accounts are handled separately from authentication. The three
primary interfaces to implement are the UserIDProvider,
UserAccountProvider, and UserInfoProvider. An overview of how these
providers should be implemented and how they interact is described in
the User Account Provider Guide included in the Openfire distribution.</p>
<p>There are several Roster (a.k.a. Buddy List) related classes in the
user package. Developers are strongly discouraged from implementing
custom RosterProvider classes. Roster provider implementation is
complicated and should be left to the Jive JDBC implementation if at
all possible. There are no disadvantages in implementing user account
data with custom providers to integrate Openfire with a CRM or ERP
user system, while leaving roster storage in Jive's standard JDBC
database tables. (Note: Openfire comes with JDBC and LDAP user account
providers 'out of the box'. It is expected that LDAP will accomodate
many enterprise integration needs).</p>
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